FreshBooks::: grow customer base by 150%

How a Company's Word-of-Mouth Strategies and Customer Focus Helped Grow Its User Base 150%
by Kimberly Smith
Case study published on 4/7/2009

Company: FreshBooks

Contact: Saul Colt, 'Head of Magic' at FreshBooks
Location: Toronto, Ontario Canada

Industry: Small business services
Annual revenue: Confidential
Number of employees: 28

Quick Read
What's the quickest way to a small-business owner's heart? Make his or her life easier.

Toronto-based FreshBooks was founded on that idea—specifically, taking the pain out of small-business expense tracking, billing, and invoicing. That service, however, is not all that has made the company what it is today.

While businesses around the globe have been faltering, five-year-old FreshBooks has grown from close to 300,000 users to over 750,000 in the past year, and much of that can be strictly attributed to word-of-mouth.

How'd they do it? Through a level of service that might best be described as refreshing.
"We treat our customers better than they've ever been treated, or expected to be treated, and we live up to everything we say we're going to do. We're overly attentive to listening to our customers, and we do fun and interesting things. That surprises people, and they talk about it," explained Saul Colt, who leads the company's word-of-mouth marketing efforts under the official title of Head of Magic. "It's so simple and ridiculously obvious, but for some reason more companies don't do it."

Read on for specific examples of how this online service vendor is keeping customers and winning over new ones, and getting a healthy dose of personal endorsements in the process.

Challenge
FreshBooks is an online invoicing and time-tracking service targeting freelancers and small businesses.
"It's not the most interesting thing in the world…not something people will likely run around and talk about on their own," admitted Colt.
Yet, the company has set out to make it just that: something everyone can—and does—talk about, whether they actually use, or even need, the service.

Campaign
The true success of FreshBooks has come from its commitment to forging real relationships with customers, potential customers, and others.

Online connections
FreshBooks uses social media, especially Twitter—where it has over 3,300 followers—to make connections with users on the Web.

On Twitter the company uses movie-quote contests and party invites to engage with customers and non-customers alike and to open the door to new conversations and relationships.

Moreover, FreshBooks has found Twitter to be an effective platform for listening to customers and other users and for getting to know them as real-world people. It then goes out of its way to respond to those people's needs, whether personal or professional.

Examples include making donations toward users' walks for charity, sending small gifts when someone has a baby, or flowers when someone has a bad day, or even just mailing off a funny story to brighten someone's day.

"Our goal is to make our customers happy, personally and professionally. We're available for advice, friendship, everything," said Colt. "The value of this is immeasurable if it is coming from a genuine place, and you make a connection with your customers."

Face-to-face interactions
Company employees traveling on business regularly host dinners for up to 30 local customers and influencers in the cities they visit. They've also been known to drive, rather than fly, to conferences in order to meet up with as many customers as possible during the trip.

At one such conference, they also used the company RV as a party shuttle and offered attendees hangover kits, along with a free pancake breakfast in the morning.

Client-centric promotions
"We don't make it about us, we make it about other people, using whatever small influence we have to prop up our customers," said Colt. "If they have better results, they will tell everyone about our service."

For instance, in March the company made up a series of "Internet All-Star" baseball cards featuring many of its customers with "shiny Internet personalities," then handed them out at the South by Southwest (SXSW) 2009 conference.

Customer involvement
FreshBooks also uses various opportunities—including its on-site user forums and weekly email newsletter, as well as in-person meetings—to garner feedback and solicit recommendations from its users.
"We rely on them for advice and suggestions, too. We make them a part of our company, and that makes everyone feel good and spread the word," said Colt.
Results

FreshBooks had close to 300,000 customers about this time last year and now has over 750,000 users, according to Colt.

"We have amazing relationships with a lot of our customers, and through these relationships we have helped to grow the company exponentially," said Colt. "It all came from treating customers as best we could."

Lessons Learned

• Customers are a business's most valuable resource. "Never take them for granted," said Colt. "If they care about your product and are passionate about it, they will champion it everywhere they go."


• Non-customers can prove to be just as valuable. "We care about people, whether they're using our service or not, and nothing stops us from talking to people who will never ever use our service," said Colt. "They can still tell ten friends about something cool we did."


• Generating great word-of-mouth is not a distinct marketing campaign; it's an everyday, ongoing part of the business. "It's our lifestyle," said Colt. "There's never a time limit or an expiry date. It's a lifetime commitment."


• It's okay to ask for referrals. "We ask people to please tell a friend," said Colt. "We don't take for granted that it will happen by itself."

Target women: Douchebaggery 101, embracing your inner douche.

Pull up to the drive-thru window, order your Famous Star with a side of machismo and check out “Target Women: Carl’s Jr.”.
Try not too laugh your ribs off. For every mention of "douche" slam a tequila. You'll never recover.

K-Y: An Intriguing Product Launch

Challenge:
The K-Y brand team wanted to reach beyond menopausal women and target a new generation of consumers—couples, both men and women—to give them the tools they needed to make their intimate moments together more special.

To successfully transform K-Y into an iconic intimacy brand and support its foray into the premium lubricant category, K-Y charged us with devising a multidimensional campaign that included traditional media outreach, influencer marketing programs, unique events, targeted sponsorships and sampling, and product placement in unexpected places.

Insight: We conducted an omnibus survey and study on intimacy and the relationships and interpersonal communication of more than 600 consumers.

These studies showed the importance of intimacy and the significant role it plays in successful and lasting relationships, which served as a great entry point as we talked with the media.

An in-depth analysis of the media through conversations and background research helped us identify the most receptive targets and create personalized approaches. This also gave us an understanding of reporters’ editorial needs and how K-Y could meet those needs.

Action:
• Created a temporary art gallery in New York’s Chelsea district.

Intrigue: The Art of Sensuality displayed works from nine artists. We used the venue to host two major events—an opening reception and a closing celebrity bash.
• Established grassroots buzz and developed an influencer program to enlist the support of brand ambassadors and evangelists before the product launched.
• Positioned K-Y as a leader in intimacy beyond its product and engaged industry specialists to communicate the importance of healthy intimacy and relationships in and out of the bedroom.
• Educated specialists on the benefits of the product and armed them with the K-Y brand’s research and survey statistics.
• Sponsored the Heatherette fashion show during New York Fashion Week as an opportunity to speak to the brand’s target luxury consumer. The product was included in 500 gift bags and handed out at the show, and it was distributed to guests at the after-party.
• Sponsored celebrity blogger Perez Hilton’s birthday bash in Los Angeles.

Outcomes: In 2007, Intrigue was the top-selling K-Y product at Walgreens and CVS. In overall drug store sales, K-Y Intrigue came in fourth place behind only Altoids and two new candy bars.

Finally, the pinnacle of K-Y success measurement, these numbers easily surpassed those of Valentine’s Day 2006.

In total, K-Y Intrigue received more than 128 million impressions, including hits on Wall Street Journal.com (WJS.com) and the coveted beauty shots of the product in several women’s magazines. K-Y Intrigue was highlighted in top-tier national outlets, including the TODAY show, Perez Hilton’s birthday bash, New York’s Daily News, New York’s Newsday, Glamour, Women’s Health, Essence, MORE, Redbook and others. Bloggers were writing about K-Y Intrigue; the media now calls K-Y “lubricant” rather than “jelly.” It was clear that we made conversations easier. It was a significant achievement for the brand and for Ogilvy PR.

Six Ways to Build Your Brand Through Customer Service

by Anand Subramaniam

When it comes to brand building, customer service is often the last and most-ignored piece of the puzzle. This is a big mistake--and big missed opportunity.
Aligning customer service and your brand is an essential but under-used way to attract and retain customers, differentiate the business, and boost brand loyalty. Done right, it can create a truly sustainable competitive advantage.
Here are six ways we've seen to use customer service to reinforce brand identity. These methods can be used to align customer service with established brands or to build a brand through customer service.
1. Establish and execute to a brand-aligned customer service intent
Successful companies formulate a strategic intent and execute to that intent for market success; savvy organizations map that strategic intent to a brand intent. While businesses often capture brand intent in their advertising, they ignore it in delivering customer service, whether it is through their websites, contact centers, stores, or branches. This could result in damage to the brand. It is therefore important for C-level executives to launch a brand-aligned customer service initiative to make sure it is implemented across customer-facing and back-office operations.

2. Design brand-aligned processes
Customer service processes often involve multiple steps, tasks, people, and organizations. For instance, contact center customer service includes call routing, interactions, resolution, and fulfillment, and could also include proactive outbound communications, based on pre-determined business rules. High-touch brands should design processes that emphasize human-assisted customer service over self-service, whether it is in a brick-and-mortar environment or in a contact center setting (e.g., phone and web chat). It is also important to ensure that promised service levels are met through robust customer service process management tools. Non-intrusive brands should refrain from aggressive in-person or live chat customer service.
3. Provide brand-aligned human-assisted service
Human-assisted service is here to stay- complex customer service requests and certain transactions require human involvement. Moreover, some customer segments prefer the human touch. As such, it is important for companies to hire and retain brand-aligned people for customer service. HR organizations could match the personality of the brand to the desired personality of frontline reps to ensure brand-aligned agent recruitment and retention.
The knowledge and conversational styles of "role model" (i.e., the most brand-aligned) call center agents can be captured in customer service management systems in the form of knowledge base content and interactive guidance to agents at the point of customer interaction, and even in customer self-service systems. Forward-looking retail and financial services companies are extending such systems to brick-and-mortar stores and branches to improve the effectiveness and brand alignment of in-person customer service
4. Provide brand-aligned self-service
Self-service provides a great opportunity to further build the brand. For example, sophisticated guided-help knowledge base systems and online chatbots modeled after the company's multimedia advertising spokespersons can orchestrate brand-aligned self-service interactions with customers. A hypothetical example would be chatbots modeled after the gecko or the "cavemen" for GEICO and William Shatner for priceline.com. In fact, a leading financial services company in Japan has used a chatbot, modeled after an actor featured in its television commercials.
5. Use brand-aligned metrics
A critical misstep in customer service management is the misalignment of brand strategy and service metrics. For instance, force-fitting Wal-Mart metrics to a Nordstrom brand intent is not a good strategy. High-touch brands should not emphasize throughput metrics such as average call handle times.
6. Brand-align all touchpoints
Most businesses still have interaction, data, and knowledge silos in phone call centers, online service centers, and self-service systems, where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Of late, many companies have started unifying customer interactions and knowledge bases into common platforms as the first step to unify customer experience across channels and service agents.
However, most companies have yet to brand-align customer service across communication channels. A unified platform approach to cross-channel customer service and brand alignment can help them get there quickly, and their customers won't have to face Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as they go from one communication channel to another, or from one agent to another

Consumer disengagment

no name::: Who?

by Reneé Alexander

April 6, 2009 issue

Even though it’s been on grocery store shelves for three decades, Loblaw Companies Ltd. is confident its no name brand is nowhere near its expiry date.

The Toronto-based grocery giant recently relaunched the iconic brand and its unmistakeable plain black printing on yellow packaging.

Company officials say the move was made to coincide with no name’s 30th birthday, and refocusing on a no-frills value brand at a time when the economy is in freefall is obviously prudent.

Three hundred products were repackaged during the first six weeks of the year—items such as bathroom tissue, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter, ketchup and canned tomato sauce—and another 2,600, including pet food, paper plates and cereals, will be recast in the old-is-new-again packaging throughout the rest of 2009. (When no name was first born, it had just 16 products.)

“Imagine going down a grocery aisle. There are so many colours. You’ll be able to spot no name almost immediately,” says David Primorac, Loblaw’s senior director of public relations. “We chose products that would be best suited to the economic conditions. We wanted to start with pantry items, everyday items.”

He says no name’s packaging changes every few years, and the company’s marketing department decided the time was right to go retro.
“We wanted to bring back the original color palette. It’s something recognizable and it’s easy for consumers. We’ve created a bit of a buzz around the packaging,” he says.

The brand has always been associated with the color yellow, and all packaging is primarily that color complemented by a simple graphical layout. Over the years, the packaging has become more detailed, utilizing a no name logo and photography of the product.

The company’s campaign includes advertisements starring CEO Galen Weston Jr. touting the money that can be saved by replacing national brands with no name ones in your shopping cart.
“We’re saying, ‘if you need to control your monthly expenses, you can do it on your grocery bill. Look to no name, you’ll find similar quality products that will save you money,’” he says, noting a shopping cart of no name products is about 20 percent cheaper than a cart of corresponding national brands.
“It’s also a call-out to our customers. We’re saying these are great, quality products. Why don’t you revisit what is considered the original economy powerhouse brand?”

Primorac says no name is being targeted to, well, pretty much everybody.
“People are price conscious, it doesn’t matter what their demographic or income level is. They’re paying attention to the financial situation in their own home. People who bought no name when it first came out, we think they’ll buy it again,” he says.
Loblaw is putting its money where its mouth is by offering a money-back guarantee on all no name products if customers aren’t satisfied with their quality.

Loblaw doesn’t release the recent marketshare figures of no name, but it’s generally considered to be between 10 and 20 percent of its sales. To give an indication of no name’s strength, one study showed Pampers used to have 85 percent market share before no name’s brand of diapers were launched. With the private label diapers on the scene, that number plummeted to 18 percent.

Raj Manchanda, a marketing professor at the I.H. Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba, says many consumers will be willing to trade “down” to no name on products where there isn’t a lot of differentiation with national brands, such as pasta sauce, ketchup or dog food.
The funny thing is, many leadings brands and their generic versions are made by the same manufacturer, he says.

“Consumers may firmly believe (a particular) brand of dog food is the best because that’s the perception that has been created through marketing,” he says. “When price becomes so important, you’re willing to say, ‘maybe there isn’t any difference between apple juices.’”
Manchanda says he likes Loblaw’s strategy of adding a little bit of excitement and a retro vibe to the shopping process.

“Even though it’s not the most exciting packaging, it still breaks through the clutter and gets your attention. It reminds people about a value proposition,” he says.
Manchanda says no name carries some significant cachet with consumers because they believe its products sell at the lowest price possible. No name won’t, however, have the same kind of brand proposition with higher-end products, such as perfume, because of the image consumers want to convey.

“We buy perfume because it’s how we express ourselves and feel about ourselves. We’re making a personal statement,” he says.
Surprisingly enough, there may even be some snob appeal to no name products for consumers who want to be perceived as savvy shoppers.
“One of the reasons consumers use coupons isn’t just the savings but because they feel they’re smart and getting better prices than others. There could very well be an element of that (with no name),” Manchanda says.
Renée Alexander is a freelance business and lifestyle writer based in Winnipeg, Canada.

LensCrafters::: Sees More

Challenge: Transform a brand perceived as a discount retailer into a trend setting purveyor of stylish specs for fashionistas and people looking to make a fashion statement by wearing optical eyewear to create a desired “look.”

Insight:
• Appoint style guru Lloyd Boston as the company’s first “Chief Style Officer”
• Place the LensCrafters brand in high-fashion events (New York Fashion Week)
• Build credibility among key fashion editors and influencers through in-store editor events

Action:
• Utilized stylist Lloyd Boston as LensCrafters “Chief Style Officer” by having him give eyewear makeovers on ABC’s The View and co-host WE Women’s Entertainment Television offering fashion and style commentary during the Oscars
• Launched the LensCrafters 5th Avenue flagship store at 45th and 5th in Manhattan
• Built the “Eye On Style Transformation Station”– a mobile replica of the 5th Avenue LensCrafters flagship store to allow consumers to “eye-cessorize” with LensCrafters luxury brands. The Transformation station was present at numerous New York Fashion Week events

Outcomes:
• Wall Street Journal front-page article positions LensCrafters as leading the charge in optical glasses as the latest “must-have” trend in fashion accessories
• The New York Times front-page article on LensCrafters flagship store opening
• Provided over 300 editors and fashion influencers with designer frames during New York Fashion Week
• Celebrities like Jamie Foxx, The Pussycat Dolls and Denise Richards were all gifted with designer eyeglasses

American Home Furnishings Alliance

Challenge: in 1998, when Americans’ disposable income was high and McMansions were emerging, yet Americans were not focused on the home as a haven for their growing families.
Furniture was simply not top of mind. AHFA wanted to increase purchase by educating consumers about the importance of furniture to their lives and homes.
We began with comprehensive consumer research. We learned that homeowners did not understand or trust their own sense of style and that women were afraid of making the wrong furniture choices. ‘Furniture fear’ kept people living with furnishings that did not reflect their personalities or lifestyles.

Insight: Everyone has a “tipping point” when it comes to needing a new piece of furniture – it may be the addition of a new child or when a child leaves home – or even when someone says, “I just can’t take looking at this old chair one more day!”

Action:
•Developed publicity-driving press kits addressing the furniture needs of multiple groups – from empty nesters, to parents, to people have small living spaces. Our media kits featured national opinion poll results, product photography and advice from industry experts.
•Created two award-winning Web sites – one for consumers to help them find their furniture styles (www.FindYourFurniture.com) and one for the news media from which to gather sources information for stories (www.ahfanews.com).
•Helped AHFA provide news and information resulting from Furniture Market, the twice per year High Point, North Carolina event that determines the future of furniture fashion. Currently we are working with the furniture industry to encourage Americans to donate their safe, underutilized

Outcomes:
•There has been a 180 degree shift in consumer attitudes and behaviors. According to independently conducted new 2008 qualitative research, 10 years after our benchmark research, consumers are highly motivated buyers, confident in their choice of furniture and rely on their own sense of style for furniture purchases.
•AFHA is viewed as the authority on home furnishings trends by America’s home and lifestyle media corps.
•AHFA has secured more than 2 billion impressions, including numerous placements in long-lead magazines and daily newspaper home sections. The industry has also been covered on “Oprah.”

3M Pharmaceuticals:::Media Launch of Aldara

Issue: 3M Pharmaceuticals had a new first-of-its-kind skin cancer treatment cream, Aldara, which it wanted launched on the Australian market.

Australia, often referred to as “the sunburnt country”, has the world’s highest skin cancer incidence and a great appetite for medical advances for it. But because the issue is so serious for Australia, any irresponsible promotion of treatments or supposed cures is widely condemned and attracts massive fines.

Within this context 3M Pharmaceuticals approached Parker & Partners last August to launch its world-first skin cancer treatment, Aldara, onto the Australian market. Aldara is the world’s first treatment for superficial cases of Basal Cell Carcinoma (sBCC) – the most common skin cancer type – to come in the form of a self-administered cream and avoid the need for medical procedures/surgery.

Challenge: Irresponsible promoters considered to be in breach of medical promotional guidelines can attract fines of hundreds and thousands of dollars. Aldara had to be launched responsibly, while still harnessing all the great media angles presented by Australia’s skin cancer experience.

While the launch of Aldara presented a great media opportunity, there were important considerations:
1. Aldara had not yet been approved in Australia for Government subsidy to make it more affordable to Australians. The Government would monitor Aldara’s promotion to ensure it acknowledged limitations and avoided creating false demand.
2. Aldara, as a pharmaceutical product, was subject to strict promotion guidelines which if breached, attract huge fines.
3. Aldara’s clinical trials had been extensively reported in the media over the past few years. We needed to convince media there was a new ‘news’ story to report.
4. Dermatologists, involved in the world trials of Aldara, were staunch advocates. But Aldara created a new market for GPs and skin cancer clinics that could negate the need to visit a dermatologist. We needed to ensure we targeted all relevant medical constituents without alienating any of them.


Insight: If we developed effective and creative media hooks into the treatment, we would not need to embellish Aldara’s significance or role in skin cancer treatment to achieve a phenomenal media outcome.
Parker & Partner’s insight was that if we developed creative and effective media hooks into the treatment, we would not need to embellish Aldara’s significance or role in skin cancer treatment to achieve a phenomenal media outcome.

Understanding the extent to which sBCC affected Australians was pivotal in how we approached this project and required extensive research in medical publications.

Creative Idea: Launching Aldara in early spring allowed us to heavily promote it as a new treatment available just in time for Spring/Summer and peak skin cancer season. We would remind Australia of its skin cancer incidence and play upon Australia’s role in the clinical trials for Aldara to give Australians a sense of ownership in this global breakthrough.

To this end we used dermatologist experts and patients from the world trials to emphasise the clinical and scientific advance of Aldara.

Campaign: Leading up to the launch date, Parker & Partners aimed for the most media coverage possible on a national basis. We prepared media across Australia pre-launch to be teed up with experts and patients local to their area on the day.
We pitched nationwide so media from all Australians states were covering it from their locale. We pampered trusted sources but otherwise were very strict with embargo.

We decided we could appear responsible as well as attract media through the issue of warnings about misuse of Aldara for cosmetic purposes. This gave the launch an issue around it and acted as a signal to authorities we were responsible promoters.





Outcome: The result was phenomonal media coverage across Australia. Every television network covered the launch, most of them several times during the day, with live crosses and updates. Every tabloid newspaper in Australia covered the launch as well as regional and rural newspapers. Aldara also achieved significant exposure in the signature national broadsheet, The Australian, and other broadsheet newwspapers through their websites.

Radio conducted feature interviews on top rating breakfast programs across Australia and there was also community service announcements and blanket coverage on news bulletins until late. We also received massive numbers of requests for information from sources as diverse as seniors publications to womens’ magazines. Television coverage extended through to the next day where top rating breakfast programs reported on Aldara. The key messages were carried and our experts did as we requested in not exaggerating the benefits of Aldara which sent the right message to authorities about 3M as a responsible company.
3M Pharmaceuticals was delighted with the media launch, attendance and the ensuing media coverage. The media coverage was nationwide, responsible and massive, a testament to our approach to this media campaign.

Aaron Diamonds AIDS Research Center:::Full Court Press: Turning the Yao Ming/Magic Johnson PSA into a Slam Dunk

Issue
China faces a crushing HIV/ AIDS epidemic, some estimates suggest that by 2010, China could have up to 10 million people infected by the HIV virus. Public awareness regarding the disease is low, in particular with regards to who is at risk and how it is contracted. China AIDS Initiative (CAI) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) decided to create a public service announcement (PSA) that would rectify common misconceptions.

The PSA featured Yao Ming, a basketball hero both in his native China and in the United States, and Magic Johnson, a former L.A. Lakers superstar, who disclosed his own HIV-positive status in 1991. The series of PSAs were designed to help educate the Chinese public about HIV/AIDS prevention, dispel common mistaken beliefs about how the disease is transmitted, and encourage viewers to visit www.aids333.com, a Chinese-language AIDS information website.

In October 2004, our firm was approached to find the best strategy to distribute the PSA, in a way that would target at-risk demographics and maximize broadcast exposure on as many Chinese TV channels as possible.

Challenges
While the PSA was compelling to a Chinese audience, at this stage it lacked a great delivery. The PSA needed to overcome the stigma regarding HIV / AIDS that remained at local TV channels, and convince television executives to air the announcement, pro bono, in a targeted way that would maximize exposure and results. Our campaign had two primary objectives:
•Maximize the exposure of the PSA
•Identify the priority target audience for the PSA based on geographic and age segment considerations.

These were vital considerations given China’s huge and fragmented media landscape of more than one thousand TV stations spread across 23 provinces, and the fact that our resources did not incldue any real budget for media buying.

Insight
With a campaign based on the unique combination of technical expertise from the China Aids Initiative, the endorsement from the influential National Basketball Association and our firm’s on-the-ground media counsel, the PSA could deliver a powerful and relevant message when adequately distributed to the right target group.

Creative Idea
The campaign would focus on the youth segment (15-25 year old) and viewers in provinces with high HIV/AIDS prevalence rates. This audience would be receptive to the PSA’s format (basket ball stars) and would also be familiar with the disease.

Campaign
To target the appropriate audience, we focused on the provinces with high HIV/ AIDS prevalence rates and The youth segment, (roughly 15 to 25), which would be most receptive to the basketball theme of the PSA and also the most apt to change their behavior towards AIDS. One this had been established, the most effective channels could be identified; we worked with our media buying agency to select TV channels which had the relevant geographic reach and focus audience.
After this initial phase, TV stations were contacted to convince them to broadcast the PSA – pro bono. They key to achieving this was educating TV executives on the importance of the message, and the value of the PSA.
Outcome
The PSA was broadcasted on more than 24 TV channels throughout China, including all of the high risk provinces of Yunnan, Anhui, Shanxi, Hebei, Sichuan, Xinjinag, Henan and Inner Mongolia. In total, the Yao Ming/Magic Johnson PSA reached over 83 million viewers, making it one of the most viewed public safety announcements in China’s history.

adidas:::Rejuvenating Chinese Volleyball: Bringing the Game Closer to China’s Youth

Category Entered:Specialist & Technique: New Media
Title of Project: Rejuvenating Chinese Volleyball: Bringing the Game Closer to China’s Youth
Client’s name:Adidas (Suzhou) Co., Ltd
Budget: US$362,500


With 2008 fast on our heels, Beijing Olympic partner and Chinese Volleyball Association partner—Adidas, was faced with several immediate challenges: The national Chinese women’s volleyball team’s (CWVT) image and the sport of volleyball itself had lost its “coolness” factor among Chinese youth. This posed as a discrepancy from Adidas overall brand persona of Young, Energetic, Fashionable, Confident and Cool.
It wasn’t always this way. Most Chinese will recall CWVT’s golden victory at the 1984 Olympics; the team had catapulted to national heroes. However thereafter, CWVT gave dismal performances which caused the team’s popularity and the sport of volleyball to decline; volleyball was perceived by youth as a game primarily for “older people.” Meanwhile, China was catching on to “the two big balls,” basketball and football, which were perceived as entertaining, star-studded and key players in shaping youth culture—exactly where Adidas aspired volleyball to be in China.
OBJECTIVES/BRIEF FROM THE CLIENT
The goals of the campaign:

• To rejuvenate CWVT image and the game of volleyball among the target audience (14-24 years old)
• Create and maintain excitement among China’s youth for CWVT as a gold contender of the 2008 Olympics
  
• Strengthen Adidas association with CWVT, 2008 Beijing Olympics and overall brand ownership of volleyball

STRATEGY
Get youth involved. Speak their language. Drive youth participation while giving the game and the team an image makeover. Research by All China Strategic Research (ACSR) focused on the target audience, both male and female. From qualitative research findings, ACSR found that:

• China’ youth culture is heavily influenced by star players, sports icons and celebrities. We need to create star power for the team.
• Though the old Olympic glory of CWVT impressed China’s youth, the team and the sport’s coolness factor was low. In the sports arena, coolness was described by adjectives such as agile, powerful, fierce, intense and exciting. We need to showcase the power of the game.
• The target audience preference was driven by a sense of ownership and participation. We need to drive youth involvement.
  

Furthermore, the 2006 China Internet Network Development Statistic Report points out that New Media channels are an effective medium to increase youth participation and attention.

METHOD DEPLOYED

Build team celebrity status: Drive PR through blogging and glamour shots
The initial phase of the campaign was to increase the profile of CWVT. Up to this point, the general audience had little knowledge of the players’ personalities. We sought to open a dialogue and close the distance between the team and their fans by creating their own blog, which is also the first Chinese Olympic team blog in history. That fact alone drove media coverage and generated traffic to the site.

Each player was given a professional makeover and photo shoot to capture fashionable shots which debuted on the blog; the photos were picked up instantaneously by major print media.

Make the game cool: Volleyball stunts through viral films:
The next phase was to shift perceptions of volleyball as a “tougher, faster, scarier” sport than previously thought. We focused on promoting six entertaining viral films via BBS and many more youth-targeted websites. The viral films were created by Adidas’ advertising agency to portray the volleyball game as edgy, dangerous and exciting. They sought to manifest the high speed of volleyball movements through creative stunts demonstrated by youth, such as:

• Digging (defensive save) in 2.5 seconds was demonstrated through flying off the roof of a racing car or from a speeding skateboard.
• Spiking at 92 km/h was illustrated through a water-gushing fire hydrant that hits a pedestrian and a coconut flying from a slingshot that hits a bystander
  

Increase fun factor: Youth call-to-action through the volleyball chant competition
Similar to popular cheers for basketball and football, we sought to create a national chant, cheer or jingle that volleyball can own. This was an opportunity for youth participation, thus Adidas launched the nation’s first chant competition (still going on now). The competition allowed for entry of a broad range of cheering forms, such as the creation of cheering slogans, chant themes, fans’ T-shirts, hand motions, dance moves related to volleyball moves. Participants can upload their cheering ideas and creations to the CWVT mini site and also rate other entries.

Incentive to participate includes selection into CWVT’s official cheering squad. Rules and registration of the competition were promoted through schools, retail stories, a press and video news release and media editorials.
OUTCOME
The campaign created new icons:

On attitudinal parameters, there was a clear positive shift of CWVT being perceived as “cooler,” sexier and more fashionable than ever.

• Post-launch research revealed that in some cities, within several months there was an increase of as much as 16% of the target audience who defined CWVT as “cool” (source: ACSR). Shanghai Times noted that fans were impressed with the team’s “never-seen-before sexiness” and their “excellent skin tone,” even drawing comparisons to professional models. One fan’s comment on the blog stated, ”I never knew the girls were so fashionable and cool!”
• CWVT extended their presence beyond the usual sports pages and made a leap towards various lifestyle media, such as popular youth magazines Easy and Touch.
  

The campaign generated tremendous hits and buzz:
The campaign was effective in stimulating buzz about CWVT and activating an attitudinal shift on volleyball.

• The blog attracted 160,865 unique visits and nearly 400,000 unique visits to the chant competition site in the first three months of its debut (source: From Zero). Oriental Sports Daily commented, “Without any prior announcement or promotion, visits to CWVT’s blog on the first day of its launch exceeded more than 20,000 page views!”
• 73% of viewers found the viral films “innovative” and “stimulating,” further describing volleyball as technique-driven, “passionate” and “powerful;” 78% of viewers also forwarded the viral films to friends.
• Within three months of the release of the viral films, more than 5.5 million visitors have clicked and viewed the films; in fact, the viewing rate was double that of the market average (source: ACSR).
  

The campaign fuelled youth energy for the team and the game:
For the first time, a channel was opened up for direct dialogue between CWVT and their fans, which gave the team an extra morale boost.
Chen Zhonghe, Chief Coach of CWVT, commented, “Adidas brought the girls closer to their fans, which is helping to boost the team’s morale and their performance! I am confident about the team’s performance at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.”
RELATION TO OBJECTIVES and COST EFFECTIVENESS
The campaign activated an attitudinal shift:
The blog established a radical facelift for CWVT, the viral films channelled a positive perception shift on volleyball, the chant competition called on China’s youth to infuse passion for the team, and the overall campaign is effectively strengthening Adidas brand association with CWVT.
Within six months of launch, research by ACSR revealed that nationally, awareness of Adidas and CWVT partnership increased by 5%, awareness of Adidas partnership with 2008 Olympics increased by 7%, and awareness of CWVT increased by 6%.
The campaign stretched the communications renminbi:
The total media coverage of the campaign to date is worth an equivalent ad spending of US$1.3 million USD (print media value source: Sinofile). To date, the estimated return of investment is more than 3 fold.
CREATIVITY AND ORIGINALITY
The New Media targeted campaign heralded a new era for Chinese Women’s Volleyball. For the first time, the Olympic hopefuls had their first collection of glamour shots with heightened celebrity status, their first blog which was also the first Olympic team blog in China (as opposed to an individual’s blog), the assembly of the first CWVT cheering squad and unprecedented media buzz.
OUTSIDE PARTNERS
TBWA (viral films)
From Zero (blog)
Sohu (viral films and blog)
ACSR (research)
Cinsos (BBS)
BUDGETS
Approximately US$362,500
CATEGORY-SPECIFIC INFORMATION
The 2006 China Internet Network Development Statistic Report points out that more than 18 million Chinese high school students surf the internet. The rate of netizens among China’s youth is increasing at rapid speed.